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Aesthetics and Politics
No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.
Discussing expressionism / Ernst Bloch
Realism in the balance / Georg Lukacs
Against Georg Luckacs / Bertolt Brecht
Conversations with Brecht / Walter Benjamin
Letters to Walter Benjamin / Theodor Adorno
Reply / Walter Benjamin
Reconciliation under duress ; Commitment / Theodor Adorno
Reflections in conclusion / Fredric Jameson
Discussing expressionism / Ernst Bloch
Realism in the balance / Georg Lukacs
Against Georg Luckacs / Bertolt Brecht
Conversations with Brecht / Walter Benjamin
Letters to Walter Benjamin / Theodor Adorno
Reply / Walter Benjamin
Reconciliation under duress ; Commitment / Theodor Adorno
Reflections in conclusion / Fredric Jameson
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Theodor W. Adorno
606 books1,400 followersTheodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence. Jürgen Habermas, Germany's foremost social philosopher after 1970, was Adorno's student and assistant. The scope of Adorno's influence stems from the interdisciplinary character of his research and of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged. It also stems from the thoroughness with which he examined Western philosophical traditions, especially from Kant onward, and the radicalness to his critique of contemporary Western society. He was a seminal social philosopher and a leading member of the first generation of Critical Theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
June 19, 2011
Like many of the reviewers on here, I have always found this book extremely useful in how it establishes the terms of debates around Marxist aesthetics for key European critics. This reading, however, I did something different from how I've approached the book in the past. Eschewing the lovely Germans and their feistiness, I opted instead to read Jameson's introductory notes as one continuous essay. This helped to foreground a few very important distinctions that often get missed, particularly by the contemporary reader.
First, it's important to remember that this book came out in 1977, at a moment of tremendous transition from the radicalism of the post '68 generation and the postmodernism of the '80s. Jameson, as we know, would play a key role in theorizing that transition. In many respects, his notes in this volume set the stage for exactly that project.
With that in mind, it's useful to not lose site of the still-smoldering urgency of the revolutionary milieu that began in the early 1960s and continued up until Reagan's election in 1980. The point was not that all art needed to engage the politics or that it needed to be Marxist. The point, at least for Jameson, was what is the role of art (and therefore, aesthetics) in the revolutionary milieu. Hence, the central figures in that debate would be Brecht and Lukacs -- both of whom participated directly in the internationalist movement of Europe and had a direct stake in the debate about Marxist aesthetics. To emphasize this point, Jameson reminds us that Adorno occupied a profoundly different position in the years of the Cold War. Although nominally a Marxist, Adorno's place in a kind of Social Democratic Western Marxism had long abandoned any interest in or sympathy for the revolutionary milieu of either Brecht or Lukacs. A fact made all the more pointed when Jameson reminds us of how Adorno's own material conditions as an academic drew direct support from liberal anti-communist institutions, like the CIA.
For the revolutionary milieu, whose echoes could still be heard in 1977, the need for a radical aesthetics drove many to the debates between Brecht and Lukacs. In terms of the former, Brecht's essays on aesthetics had just been collected and published for the first time in 1967 on the eve of "the events." And Lukacz would make a tremendous impact on radical intellectuals through the publication of his HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS (1968, tr. 1971). For the contemporary reader, think about it this way; the whole of radical cinema (e.g. Godard and Third Cinema) and even certain artistic practices embraced Brecht's ideas as the key to formulating a radical artistic praxis. Conversely, radicals like Guy Debord and the Situationists adopted Lukacs's analysis of reification as the very basis of a critique of spectacle culture. Hence, the Brecht / Lukacs debate was, in fact, a lens through which artists and intellectuals like Jameson made sense of their present historical moment.
For that reason, in terms of a revolutionary aesthetics, the high-low culture debates of the 1950s and early '60s (in which Adorno figured prominently) seemed increasingly old hat and irrelevant.
It's also useful to keep in mind some of the historical blindnesses that inform Jameson's own analysis. As he readily admits, his own framework as a critic is clearly the West. Consequently, it is excruciating to read the extent to which that framework limits his own analysis. While one might appreciate the criticism that Brecht never theorized a general aesthetics beyond a justification for his own practice, it's hard to take seriously Jameson's claim that the political failure of Godard signals the failure of Brechtian aesthetics in general. I can only hope that sometime after 1977 Jameson encountered the Third Cinema movement which not only realized Brecht's ideas but dramatically surpassed them through a process of realist engagement just of the sort Jameson advocates. In fact, a useful follow up to AESTHETICS AND POLITICS would be a rigorous study of how the Lukacs / Brecht debate shaped the post-colonial and anti-imperialist practices of African and Latin American creators. In those contexts, the stakes of on-going revolutionary struggle approach the binary of Realism and Modernism not as opposing sides in a grand contest, but two terms in need to be dialecticized. This is, exactly what we find in much of Third Cinema.
Finally, one last note that really stood out for me by reading straight through Jameson's comments. In reviewing the different positions between Brecht and his critics in Adorno and Lukacs, Jameson makes the salient point that it is the former who has a far more clear idea of the role of aesthetics within politics. While the critics expect for the art object to fully demonstrate a radical aesthetics, Brecht is more modest. It is, after all, in the theater, with an audience and in relationship to a larger political context that the radicalism of any art object becomes apparent. But of course, accepting this fact means that the critic must not only consider the object in itself but also its context in time and place. But doing so escapes the traditional purview of aesthetics and begins too much to sound like sociology. Thus, the art critic has to invent the object in order to identify its failures in realizing a radical aesthetic. This is a lesson that critics to this day seem not to be able to learn. And, as a result, artists adopt the lie that the work of art must be political in itself if it is to pass for radical. Their own participation in politics, and the politics of the object in its social reception and activation, these considerations all too often fall from view. Jameson, of course, is not beyond entering into the same mistake. The insistence that a revolutionary aesthetic must engage the Realism versus Modernist abstraction debate, fails to raise the more pressing and, for artists, more practical consideration; how do these terms shape an aesthetics of reception?
First, it's important to remember that this book came out in 1977, at a moment of tremendous transition from the radicalism of the post '68 generation and the postmodernism of the '80s. Jameson, as we know, would play a key role in theorizing that transition. In many respects, his notes in this volume set the stage for exactly that project.
With that in mind, it's useful to not lose site of the still-smoldering urgency of the revolutionary milieu that began in the early 1960s and continued up until Reagan's election in 1980. The point was not that all art needed to engage the politics or that it needed to be Marxist. The point, at least for Jameson, was what is the role of art (and therefore, aesthetics) in the revolutionary milieu. Hence, the central figures in that debate would be Brecht and Lukacs -- both of whom participated directly in the internationalist movement of Europe and had a direct stake in the debate about Marxist aesthetics. To emphasize this point, Jameson reminds us that Adorno occupied a profoundly different position in the years of the Cold War. Although nominally a Marxist, Adorno's place in a kind of Social Democratic Western Marxism had long abandoned any interest in or sympathy for the revolutionary milieu of either Brecht or Lukacs. A fact made all the more pointed when Jameson reminds us of how Adorno's own material conditions as an academic drew direct support from liberal anti-communist institutions, like the CIA.
For the revolutionary milieu, whose echoes could still be heard in 1977, the need for a radical aesthetics drove many to the debates between Brecht and Lukacs. In terms of the former, Brecht's essays on aesthetics had just been collected and published for the first time in 1967 on the eve of "the events." And Lukacz would make a tremendous impact on radical intellectuals through the publication of his HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS (1968, tr. 1971). For the contemporary reader, think about it this way; the whole of radical cinema (e.g. Godard and Third Cinema) and even certain artistic practices embraced Brecht's ideas as the key to formulating a radical artistic praxis. Conversely, radicals like Guy Debord and the Situationists adopted Lukacs's analysis of reification as the very basis of a critique of spectacle culture. Hence, the Brecht / Lukacs debate was, in fact, a lens through which artists and intellectuals like Jameson made sense of their present historical moment.
For that reason, in terms of a revolutionary aesthetics, the high-low culture debates of the 1950s and early '60s (in which Adorno figured prominently) seemed increasingly old hat and irrelevant.
It's also useful to keep in mind some of the historical blindnesses that inform Jameson's own analysis. As he readily admits, his own framework as a critic is clearly the West. Consequently, it is excruciating to read the extent to which that framework limits his own analysis. While one might appreciate the criticism that Brecht never theorized a general aesthetics beyond a justification for his own practice, it's hard to take seriously Jameson's claim that the political failure of Godard signals the failure of Brechtian aesthetics in general. I can only hope that sometime after 1977 Jameson encountered the Third Cinema movement which not only realized Brecht's ideas but dramatically surpassed them through a process of realist engagement just of the sort Jameson advocates. In fact, a useful follow up to AESTHETICS AND POLITICS would be a rigorous study of how the Lukacs / Brecht debate shaped the post-colonial and anti-imperialist practices of African and Latin American creators. In those contexts, the stakes of on-going revolutionary struggle approach the binary of Realism and Modernism not as opposing sides in a grand contest, but two terms in need to be dialecticized. This is, exactly what we find in much of Third Cinema.
Finally, one last note that really stood out for me by reading straight through Jameson's comments. In reviewing the different positions between Brecht and his critics in Adorno and Lukacs, Jameson makes the salient point that it is the former who has a far more clear idea of the role of aesthetics within politics. While the critics expect for the art object to fully demonstrate a radical aesthetics, Brecht is more modest. It is, after all, in the theater, with an audience and in relationship to a larger political context that the radicalism of any art object becomes apparent. But of course, accepting this fact means that the critic must not only consider the object in itself but also its context in time and place. But doing so escapes the traditional purview of aesthetics and begins too much to sound like sociology. Thus, the art critic has to invent the object in order to identify its failures in realizing a radical aesthetic. This is a lesson that critics to this day seem not to be able to learn. And, as a result, artists adopt the lie that the work of art must be political in itself if it is to pass for radical. Their own participation in politics, and the politics of the object in its social reception and activation, these considerations all too often fall from view. Jameson, of course, is not beyond entering into the same mistake. The insistence that a revolutionary aesthetic must engage the Realism versus Modernist abstraction debate, fails to raise the more pressing and, for artists, more practical consideration; how do these terms shape an aesthetics of reception?
September 29, 2017
This book combines two recently-discovered favourites of mine: literary theory, and Marxist theory. Of course, the two have obvious overlap, but I'd never seen them united and so beautifully woven together until I read this book. The chapters here are mostly essays or letters by the people mentioned on the title page, and you'll get more value out of this book if you've read their longer texts first, but it's not necessary; you can always read them afterwards if you want to better understand the context.
My favourite things about this book: the peeks into Benjamin and Brecht's relationship as provided by Benjamin's wonderful diary entries; the absolutely savage but no less cultured way these men attack each other's theories (I wish MY critics addressed me the way Adorno does his friends--it's like getting stabbed with a stunningly elegant knife, which of course still hurts but at least you can admire its beauty); the remarkable ease with which aesthetic concepts are merged with political ones in their arguments. I now want to read everything related to the Frankfurt School that I can get my hands on.
On a completely tangential and very personal note, I'm so jealous of the people who were introduced to this kind of stuff in college or, a fortiori, earlier in life, through parents or teachers. The closest I had teacher-wise was a high school IB English HL teacher who pointed us in the direction of the deconstructionists but never went so far as to actually deconstruct, so to speak, their theories for us. (They weren't required knowledge for the IB assessment, so. I remember learning the phrase "death of the author" and leaving it at that.) Parent-wise, mine had completed the unimaginably difficult task of immigrating from the depths of rural China to the West and thus had, understandably, very little interest in Western philosophy or politics. My dad did happen to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of China, but of course that means something very different when that party is actually the ruling party (and really only party) of the country you live in, rather than a fringe movement that appeals mostly to disaffected youth. In any case, I got the impression it was more of a shrewd career move than a sincere political belief.
All this to say that I had little exposure to anything remotely approaching critical theory until very recently. About a year ago, I was two years into a presumed life sentence at a tech startup whose premise I had absolutely zero faith in. I was completely unhappy with what I was doing and could no longer see something to look forward to with my career. Everything that I had put so much effort into for the last two years was melting into air, and I was lost, resigned, adrift in an ocean of meaningless customer acquisition targets. It felt like I was at one of those sushi places with a conveyer belt but, like, the kitchen was closed, and I was just sitting there watching the conveyer belt go round and round, hoping against hope that the dish I wanted would turn up but instead seeing the same unappetising options displayed over and over.
So I started to rediscover an old passion: books. At first it was merely a refuge from the exigencies of a stultifying 9-5, but I soon realised I was hooked. Two main paths emerged: David Foster Wallace (and literary criticism thereof), and critiques of the current socioeconomic system. The latter path began with the fairly milquetoast mea culpas of mainstream economists wringing their hands over the 2008 crisis, but I have now reached the wonderful heights of critical theory. Surprisingly, at least to me, the two paths intersected quite a bit, in terms of vocabulary used, philosophers mentioned, and ideas explored. Both paths brought me, more or less simultaneously, to Frankfurt School theories, which, so far, seems to me like the apotheosis of both paths.
Wow, so this review turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would. So yeah, my message to anyone who sees this: read more, and don't be afraid of going down rabbit holes. You just might discover a part of yourself you'll want to nourish.
My favourite things about this book: the peeks into Benjamin and Brecht's relationship as provided by Benjamin's wonderful diary entries; the absolutely savage but no less cultured way these men attack each other's theories (I wish MY critics addressed me the way Adorno does his friends--it's like getting stabbed with a stunningly elegant knife, which of course still hurts but at least you can admire its beauty); the remarkable ease with which aesthetic concepts are merged with political ones in their arguments. I now want to read everything related to the Frankfurt School that I can get my hands on.
On a completely tangential and very personal note, I'm so jealous of the people who were introduced to this kind of stuff in college or, a fortiori, earlier in life, through parents or teachers. The closest I had teacher-wise was a high school IB English HL teacher who pointed us in the direction of the deconstructionists but never went so far as to actually deconstruct, so to speak, their theories for us. (They weren't required knowledge for the IB assessment, so. I remember learning the phrase "death of the author" and leaving it at that.) Parent-wise, mine had completed the unimaginably difficult task of immigrating from the depths of rural China to the West and thus had, understandably, very little interest in Western philosophy or politics. My dad did happen to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of China, but of course that means something very different when that party is actually the ruling party (and really only party) of the country you live in, rather than a fringe movement that appeals mostly to disaffected youth. In any case, I got the impression it was more of a shrewd career move than a sincere political belief.
All this to say that I had little exposure to anything remotely approaching critical theory until very recently. About a year ago, I was two years into a presumed life sentence at a tech startup whose premise I had absolutely zero faith in. I was completely unhappy with what I was doing and could no longer see something to look forward to with my career. Everything that I had put so much effort into for the last two years was melting into air, and I was lost, resigned, adrift in an ocean of meaningless customer acquisition targets. It felt like I was at one of those sushi places with a conveyer belt but, like, the kitchen was closed, and I was just sitting there watching the conveyer belt go round and round, hoping against hope that the dish I wanted would turn up but instead seeing the same unappetising options displayed over and over.
So I started to rediscover an old passion: books. At first it was merely a refuge from the exigencies of a stultifying 9-5, but I soon realised I was hooked. Two main paths emerged: David Foster Wallace (and literary criticism thereof), and critiques of the current socioeconomic system. The latter path began with the fairly milquetoast mea culpas of mainstream economists wringing their hands over the 2008 crisis, but I have now reached the wonderful heights of critical theory. Surprisingly, at least to me, the two paths intersected quite a bit, in terms of vocabulary used, philosophers mentioned, and ideas explored. Both paths brought me, more or less simultaneously, to Frankfurt School theories, which, so far, seems to me like the apotheosis of both paths.
Wow, so this review turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would. So yeah, my message to anyone who sees this: read more, and don't be afraid of going down rabbit holes. You just might discover a part of yourself you'll want to nourish.
May 7, 2019
here's a compilation of each "battle":
round one: ernst bloch vs georg lukács
winner: lukács by sheer sassiness
round two: bertolt brecht vs walter benjamin
brecht worries about trashing lúkacs while benjamin talks about how much brecht likes to talk about himself--so we'll call this a tie
round three: theodor adorno vs walter benjamin
both very polite while mentioning things they don't agree with. the round would have gone to adorno for suggesting calling benjamin's essay "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" but this one has to go to benjamin for calling adorno "teddy"
round four: theodor adorno vs theodor adorno
adorno replying to the void, aren't we the real winners here?
round one: ernst bloch vs georg lukács
winner: lukács by sheer sassiness
round two: bertolt brecht vs walter benjamin
brecht worries about trashing lúkacs while benjamin talks about how much brecht likes to talk about himself--so we'll call this a tie
round three: theodor adorno vs walter benjamin
both very polite while mentioning things they don't agree with. the round would have gone to adorno for suggesting calling benjamin's essay "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" but this one has to go to benjamin for calling adorno "teddy"
round four: theodor adorno vs theodor adorno
adorno replying to the void, aren't we the real winners here?
October 13, 2015
lukacs has some points but he is very easy to misunderstand. lots of bs from adorno. the interludes were awesome. brecht was painfully clear-headed and sharp. benjamin knows how to ignore adorno. jameson's summary was awesome.
August 15, 2019
Esse livro/edição é um achado. Organiza cartas/ensaios/artigos de modo a compor vários diálogos sobre um eixo temático em deslocamento. As introduções são preciosas e a conclusão brilhante. O que começa como um debate claro entre dois pontos de vista opostos vai crescendo em questões mais complexas e de difícil solução. A aporia final sugerida por Jameson é a única resolução possível (isto é, uma irresolução).
Não ter lido esse livro antes de escrever minha tese é um crime do qual não me perdoarei.
Não ter lido esse livro antes de escrever minha tese é um crime do qual não me perdoarei.
May 18, 2012
If you think Marxism and art have nothing in common save propaganda posters, you're probably not going to want to read this book anyway. It's dense, and pitched as a battle amongst those modern Marxist aesthetes who shaped the debates on art as a political medium. Don't expect to find anything like consensus here - although Adorno seems to be the last word, it really is Benjamin whose thoughts seem most beautiful, lucid and free of intellectualism - in other words, most like an artist himself.
March 25, 2017
Compact introduction to the Frankfurt School on the relation of art to politics. If one must take a side, always choose the side of the artist creator over that of the critic interpreter.
November 8, 2020
Fui ler pelo "Realism in the Balance" do Lukács, mas acabei lendo o resto. Muito boa a construção do debate, com ênfase no artigo final do Jameson, que consegue dar um balanço muito bom do papel da arte marxista no futuro próximo. Infelizmente o Adorno é muito bundão e eu não posso dar 5 estrelas...
October 27, 2024
Thinking about how my third year in university, my mom gifted me the copy of this book she used when she was in grad school thirty-some years ago. I carried her copy of Aesthetics and Politics with me through the rest of my degree and it, in turn, carried me to the Master’s in German Studies which I’m completing today :,) Immensely grateful to this book which completely transformed my life and to my wonderful, brilliant mom.
June 20, 2020
The translations are good, although at times they suffer from grammar so clunky that you can feel the original German trying to claw its way onto the page.
The real fundamental issue with this book is: what is the point of it? On paper, the concept of positing critique/reply style mini essays on Marxist Aesthetic theory against each other seems positive in that it could stimulate dialectic analysis and position theory within a historical framework. In reality, though, it quickly devolves into personal opinion and hang ups veiled in academic language. For example, Lukács can seemingly only conceptualise art as novels, and throughout the only time a piece of non-literature art is mentioned is a brief reference to Picasso’s Guernica. Actual consideration of art and aesthetic takes a back seat to arch comments about the rigorousness of another critic’s theoretical approach. There is not a speck of praxis to be had and the thinkers represented in the book come off, at best, as catty, aloof, and superficial. The choice, for example, to include the correspondence from Adorno to Benjamin wherein in the midst of general quibbling he remarks ‘The laughter of the audience at a cinema... is anything but good and revolutionary; instead, it is full of the worst bourgeois sadism’ in a letter dated 18th March 1936 - 11 days after German forces re-militarised the Rhineland and violated the treaty of Versailles - smacks of ‘complaining about the colour of the curtains while the house burns down’.
There certainly is an important place in Marxist theory for aesthetics. The field itself is of great worth. Given the material conditions at the time - the successes and failures of the ‘popular front’ movements and the USSR, the respective positions of the contributors within governments or parties - it is not surprising that the form that aesthetic analysis takes here seems to be animated by reactionary and personal ideas. This is not to say that the essays and correspondence do not have worth, though perhaps a harsher editor could have presented the material in a more critical way and given the overall theoretical field a better sheen. The concluding afterword by Jameson does go some way towards this and is a redeeming feature. It is measured, realistic in analysis and both sympathetic towards the problems faced by the thinkers presented in this book and critical of their vindictive and narrow-minded approaches.
The real fundamental issue with this book is: what is the point of it? On paper, the concept of positing critique/reply style mini essays on Marxist Aesthetic theory against each other seems positive in that it could stimulate dialectic analysis and position theory within a historical framework. In reality, though, it quickly devolves into personal opinion and hang ups veiled in academic language. For example, Lukács can seemingly only conceptualise art as novels, and throughout the only time a piece of non-literature art is mentioned is a brief reference to Picasso’s Guernica. Actual consideration of art and aesthetic takes a back seat to arch comments about the rigorousness of another critic’s theoretical approach. There is not a speck of praxis to be had and the thinkers represented in the book come off, at best, as catty, aloof, and superficial. The choice, for example, to include the correspondence from Adorno to Benjamin wherein in the midst of general quibbling he remarks ‘The laughter of the audience at a cinema... is anything but good and revolutionary; instead, it is full of the worst bourgeois sadism’ in a letter dated 18th March 1936 - 11 days after German forces re-militarised the Rhineland and violated the treaty of Versailles - smacks of ‘complaining about the colour of the curtains while the house burns down’.
There certainly is an important place in Marxist theory for aesthetics. The field itself is of great worth. Given the material conditions at the time - the successes and failures of the ‘popular front’ movements and the USSR, the respective positions of the contributors within governments or parties - it is not surprising that the form that aesthetic analysis takes here seems to be animated by reactionary and personal ideas. This is not to say that the essays and correspondence do not have worth, though perhaps a harsher editor could have presented the material in a more critical way and given the overall theoretical field a better sheen. The concluding afterword by Jameson does go some way towards this and is a redeeming feature. It is measured, realistic in analysis and both sympathetic towards the problems faced by the thinkers presented in this book and critical of their vindictive and narrow-minded approaches.
December 29, 2011
Still surprisingly apt, even with so much time that has passed. This is a well-constructed collection of letter and papers on the role of art and its interaction with political thought/action. If you think art matters, but sometimes have a hard time articulating how or why, this book provides some nice theoretical exploration of just those issues.
Special appreciation must be given to the written introductions to each exchange, establishing the stakes and particular points of disagreement. Fredric Jameson's Afterword is an excellent summary, and also explains clearly why these discussions still matter.
It's a forbidding title, but the books contents make it almost a page-turner.
Special appreciation must be given to the written introductions to each exchange, establishing the stakes and particular points of disagreement. Fredric Jameson's Afterword is an excellent summary, and also explains clearly why these discussions still matter.
It's a forbidding title, but the books contents make it almost a page-turner.
Read
June 12, 2014This volume could easily be subtitled "dispatches from a lost world." The writings here are generally far less interesting in their subject matter than what they have to say about the context they were written in, the authors' relationship to each other, and the shattered/shattering Mitteleuropa culture of the day. Bloch the optimist, Brecht the wit, Lukacs the failure, Benjamin and Adorno the transcendent geniuses. I could do without the conclusion by noted bloviator Fredric Jameson, though.
May 11, 2024
marxistische intellectuelen VERNIETIGEN györgy lukács met FEITEN en DIALECTIEK
gemengde gevoelens over deze bloemlezing met thema's zoals kunst, realisme, modernisme en representatie als rode draad. de eerste helft van dit boek (het debat tussen Bloch, Lukács en Brecht) is de leesbaarste en boeiendste. Lukács is hier weliswaar onuitstaanbaar in zijn verdediging van realisme als de enige authentiek-volkse stijl en zijn claim dat expressionisme tot fascisme leidt, maar zijn essay is lezenswaardig als illustratie van het soort debatten dat in links-intellectuele kringen van de 30s courant was. het regent wollig verpakte platitudes waarmee Bloch en Brecht elk op hun manier komaf maken. vooral die laatste slaat de nagel op zijn kop met zijn vaststelling dat het concept 'volksheid' zelf allesbehalve volks is. je kunt je moeilijk voorstellen dat iemand anders dan een lichtjes wereldvreemde theoreticus verkondigt dat één enkele literaire stijl het alleenrecht heeft om Het Volk te vertegenwoordigen, vanuit een houding die nogal ruikt naar intellectueel paternalisme. inmiddels toont Bloch aan hoe je evengoed kunt stellen dat expressionisme juist volkser is dan realisme door simpelweg op andere aspecten in te zoomen.
na dit sappige debat (dat wel iets wegheeft van de huidige spanningen tussen Kendrick Lamar en Drake) neemt het boek een wending die ik minder kon smaken. de teksten van Bloch, Lukács en Brecht waren goed te volgen zonder veel voorkennis, hingen samen en hadden een duidelijke relevantie. de briefwisseling tussen Adorno en Benjamin? daar heb ik minder uit opgestoken, tenzij misschien dat Adorno nogal een zelfingenomen zak was. de brieven zitten vol jargon dat, ondanks de handige presentaties door Frederic Jameson, voor een groot deel obscuur blijft, en driekwart van de tijd gaan ze over detailkwesties die eerder zouden thuishoren in een dieptestudie over de Frankfurtschool dan in een algemene bloemlezing van teksten over esthetiek en politiek. interessante bemerkingen zijn er wel, maar ze gaan verloren in de zee van verwarrende minutia.
ten slotte krijgen we nog eens twee disstracks van Adorno aan het adres van Lukács en Brecht. eigenlijk is het raar dat Adorno zo'n disproportioneel deel van de bloemlezing opeist. maar hier is hij wel bijzonder scherp, helder en biedt de meest definitieve verpulvering van Lukács' argumenten die in heel het boek te vinden is. hij zet goed in de verf hoe stromannerig en eendimensionaal de latere Lukács is in zijn "analyses" van romanpassages of gedichten - vaak tot op het komische af, zoals wanneer hij een romanfiguur die zegt "Ik wou dat de wereld niet bestond" interpreteert als bourgeois subjectivisme. Adorno is zo toegeeflijk om te bemerken dat niet alleen Lukács maar ook het verstikkende intellectuele klimaat in het Oostblok hier schuld draagt aan de afstomping.
de disstrack over Brecht blijkt evengoed tegen Sartre gericht te zijn. ook hier is Adorno al bij al scherp en gevat, ondanks een knipoog naar de "autoritaire persoonlijkheid" en passages waar hij het politieke potentieel van kunst té hard ontkracht. hij legt de vinger op de zere plek met zijn bemerking dat kunst die uitdrukking geeft aan spanningen in de maatschappij veel politieker kan zijn dan de meest openlijke, drammerige propagandaroman. hij werpt ook vragen op over de grens tussen satire en trivialisering: "The Great Dictator loses all satirical force and becomes obscene when a Jewish girl can hit a line of storm-troopers on the head with a pan without being torn to pieces." de beste satires zijn dus niet alleen satires, maar nemen hun doelwit tegelijk ook serieus. langs de andere kant zijn Adorno's alternatieven evengoed weinig bevredigend, zoals Jameson opmerkt, en ook hij strandt in een vrij eenzijdig beeld van politieke kunst.
met een cliché zou je kunnen concluderen dat de schrijvers in deze bundel allemaal een "stukje van de waarheid" bezitten, of dat ze elkaars "blinde vlekken" compenseren. maar tegelijk blijf ik achter met een gevoel dat dit hele debat iets futiels heeft, alle boeiende inzichten ten spijt. het is een beetje een poppentheater waarin alle auteurs de rol van hun eigen handpop (realisme, modernisme) uitspelen en daarmee het feit uit de weg gaan dat alle kunst zo verschillend is qua vorm, medium, inhoud, context en doel dat je ze moeilijk kunt samenballen tot één Theorie-met-grote-T. wie dat probeert, dreigt in een van de vele tinten van verstard idealisme te verzinken. hoeveel helderder kun je kunst uiteindelijk maken door erover te filosoferen, laat staan door er richtlijnen voor op te stellen?
gemengde gevoelens over deze bloemlezing met thema's zoals kunst, realisme, modernisme en representatie als rode draad. de eerste helft van dit boek (het debat tussen Bloch, Lukács en Brecht) is de leesbaarste en boeiendste. Lukács is hier weliswaar onuitstaanbaar in zijn verdediging van realisme als de enige authentiek-volkse stijl en zijn claim dat expressionisme tot fascisme leidt, maar zijn essay is lezenswaardig als illustratie van het soort debatten dat in links-intellectuele kringen van de 30s courant was. het regent wollig verpakte platitudes waarmee Bloch en Brecht elk op hun manier komaf maken. vooral die laatste slaat de nagel op zijn kop met zijn vaststelling dat het concept 'volksheid' zelf allesbehalve volks is. je kunt je moeilijk voorstellen dat iemand anders dan een lichtjes wereldvreemde theoreticus verkondigt dat één enkele literaire stijl het alleenrecht heeft om Het Volk te vertegenwoordigen, vanuit een houding die nogal ruikt naar intellectueel paternalisme. inmiddels toont Bloch aan hoe je evengoed kunt stellen dat expressionisme juist volkser is dan realisme door simpelweg op andere aspecten in te zoomen.
na dit sappige debat (dat wel iets wegheeft van de huidige spanningen tussen Kendrick Lamar en Drake) neemt het boek een wending die ik minder kon smaken. de teksten van Bloch, Lukács en Brecht waren goed te volgen zonder veel voorkennis, hingen samen en hadden een duidelijke relevantie. de briefwisseling tussen Adorno en Benjamin? daar heb ik minder uit opgestoken, tenzij misschien dat Adorno nogal een zelfingenomen zak was. de brieven zitten vol jargon dat, ondanks de handige presentaties door Frederic Jameson, voor een groot deel obscuur blijft, en driekwart van de tijd gaan ze over detailkwesties die eerder zouden thuishoren in een dieptestudie over de Frankfurtschool dan in een algemene bloemlezing van teksten over esthetiek en politiek. interessante bemerkingen zijn er wel, maar ze gaan verloren in de zee van verwarrende minutia.
ten slotte krijgen we nog eens twee disstracks van Adorno aan het adres van Lukács en Brecht. eigenlijk is het raar dat Adorno zo'n disproportioneel deel van de bloemlezing opeist. maar hier is hij wel bijzonder scherp, helder en biedt de meest definitieve verpulvering van Lukács' argumenten die in heel het boek te vinden is. hij zet goed in de verf hoe stromannerig en eendimensionaal de latere Lukács is in zijn "analyses" van romanpassages of gedichten - vaak tot op het komische af, zoals wanneer hij een romanfiguur die zegt "Ik wou dat de wereld niet bestond" interpreteert als bourgeois subjectivisme. Adorno is zo toegeeflijk om te bemerken dat niet alleen Lukács maar ook het verstikkende intellectuele klimaat in het Oostblok hier schuld draagt aan de afstomping.
de disstrack over Brecht blijkt evengoed tegen Sartre gericht te zijn. ook hier is Adorno al bij al scherp en gevat, ondanks een knipoog naar de "autoritaire persoonlijkheid" en passages waar hij het politieke potentieel van kunst té hard ontkracht. hij legt de vinger op de zere plek met zijn bemerking dat kunst die uitdrukking geeft aan spanningen in de maatschappij veel politieker kan zijn dan de meest openlijke, drammerige propagandaroman. hij werpt ook vragen op over de grens tussen satire en trivialisering: "The Great Dictator loses all satirical force and becomes obscene when a Jewish girl can hit a line of storm-troopers on the head with a pan without being torn to pieces." de beste satires zijn dus niet alleen satires, maar nemen hun doelwit tegelijk ook serieus. langs de andere kant zijn Adorno's alternatieven evengoed weinig bevredigend, zoals Jameson opmerkt, en ook hij strandt in een vrij eenzijdig beeld van politieke kunst.
met een cliché zou je kunnen concluderen dat de schrijvers in deze bundel allemaal een "stukje van de waarheid" bezitten, of dat ze elkaars "blinde vlekken" compenseren. maar tegelijk blijf ik achter met een gevoel dat dit hele debat iets futiels heeft, alle boeiende inzichten ten spijt. het is een beetje een poppentheater waarin alle auteurs de rol van hun eigen handpop (realisme, modernisme) uitspelen en daarmee het feit uit de weg gaan dat alle kunst zo verschillend is qua vorm, medium, inhoud, context en doel dat je ze moeilijk kunt samenballen tot één Theorie-met-grote-T. wie dat probeert, dreigt in een van de vele tinten van verstard idealisme te verzinken. hoeveel helderder kun je kunst uiteindelijk maken door erover te filosoferen, laat staan door er richtlijnen voor op te stellen?
November 14, 2025
A Marxist reader. The debates on realism and modernism are interesting. The political certitudes aren’t.
August 12, 2018
An interesting if not somewhat dated set of essays, letters, and articles about the political implications of aesthetic forms. Bloch and Lukacs argue about the nature of Expressionism, where Lukacs thinks that Expressionism's logical end is a fascist turn. Lukacs advocates very strongly for realism as a necessary progressive force, sometimes convincingly. When he delves into Marx and Hegel in his arguments he's interesting, but otherwise I find his ideas on art entirely too rigid. I've found Brecht much more enjoyable to read. His critique of Lukacs' realist rigidity is incisive and maintains a more robust advocacy of a popular realism that Brecht tried to realize in his plays and poems.
The Benjamin and Adorno pieces were surprisingly less interesting in my view, besides Adorno's last section against Sartre on 'commitment'. However, I think I would have drawn significantly less insight and relevant analysis from this compilation if it did not include Fredric Jameson's conclusion. His remarks on Lukacs' conception of 'decadence' (and reification) as well as Brecht's scientific Marxism provide the needed link between these 1930s pieces and today's Marxist discussions on aesthetics.
The Benjamin and Adorno pieces were surprisingly less interesting in my view, besides Adorno's last section against Sartre on 'commitment'. However, I think I would have drawn significantly less insight and relevant analysis from this compilation if it did not include Fredric Jameson's conclusion. His remarks on Lukacs' conception of 'decadence' (and reification) as well as Brecht's scientific Marxism provide the needed link between these 1930s pieces and today's Marxist discussions on aesthetics.
November 24, 2020
A unique yet helpful format for accessing debates surrounding Marxist aesthetics - with a smashing postscript by Frederic Jameson.
The highlight of the book is the opening presentation surrounding the realist/modernist debate pervading much early 20th century music and accompanying the crisis point reached in western tonality - the summit of the harmonic dialectic within music - but also wider crises reached in the arts in general. Ernst Bloch opens with a defence of expressionism with an obvious acknowledgement of the latent authoritarianism creeping into soviet arts policy. He espouses expressionism as the revolutionary form that can expose the fissures of capitalism and represent the system in its decadence. Georgy Lukacs however provides a stark rebuttal of this and delivers a scathing critique of bourgeois conceptions of art. Notably the concept of 'immediacy' within art - the idea that much bourgeois art, though trying to represent concrete reality, fails to truly grasp the essence of society and its immanent relations. Lukacs demonstrates a rigorous knowledge of Hegel and cites the artist goal as being one of attaining 'all-round knowledge' with reference to Lenin. Art (literature) should grasp objective reality through Hegelian logic, and not just reproduce whatever manifests itself immediately and on the surface. One must understand the role of art in its context within the Hegelian totality and understand the correct dialectical unity of appearance and essence - then present this to the consumer without the need for any external commentary. With its utilitarian implications, this presents itself as the more convincing argument as it is a more accessible form for the working class to indulge in. The expressionists would refute this and claim the working classes are enthusiasts for such avant-garde music, but I regrettably struggle to believe this.
The rest of the book features more particular aesthetic critiques. Firstly Brecht, writing with characteristic theatricality and emotion, rebutting Lukacs and acknowledging his connections with the soviet union, I feel Brecht is trying to defend his own forays into self-indulgent art a tad, yet I don't blame him for his works are brilliant. Brecht relentlessly defends the right to free expression as the crux of his aesthetic philosophy - specifically the freedom for the artist to fail.
A congenial debate between Adorno and Benjamin ensues with conversation surrounding any of their key ideas. Commodity fetishism is discussed, that old Marxian term which Benjamin resuscitates and places at the heart of his cultural critique. Benjamin places strong emphasis on the phantasmic forces that dictate a commodities exchange value and pose existential threats to the nature of the human-as-commodity. This forms the foundation of much thought arising from the Frankfurt school. Elsewhere, Adorno is cautious when discussing Benjamin's optimism regarding his thesis 'Art in the age of mechanical production', noting how the culture industry, like all embodiments of capital, find ways of circumventing existential threats and barriers to accumulation. Benjamin's view that the accessible reproducibility of art can pose revolutionary opportunities to the proletariat in creating and owning a culture that can elevate consciousness to a new level - Adorno replies in stylistic pessimism that the new art forms arising can easily be assimilated into the establishment as evinced by the concrete realities of jazz. The concept of 'art as distraction' is explored and uncovers a critique of wider orthodox Marxist views. They both acknowledge how art under the current economic base serves a opiating function that in the Soviet union has not been removed and structures the regime's imposition of socialist realism as an aesthetic principle. This reflects the wider views of the Frankfurt school who look to distance themselves from the Marxist disposition towards labour as a liberating principle of humanity's 'species being' - particularly critiques from Marcuse in 'Liberation of eros' that attaches a freudian perspective.
Adorno is by far the most rigorous Marxist aestheticist yet despite the coherence of his theories, a lot of them do not stand the test of time. Firstly, positioning expressionism - particularly Schoenberg's - as the ultimate aesthetic in Marxism. He describes art as 'negative knowledge' of the world that should not 'resolve objective contradictions in a spurious harmony' but instead embody the contradictions, 'pure and compromised' in its innermost structure. I assume this views the explicit dissonances within expressionism as the ultimate embodiment and representation of the horrific nature of capitalism in its final stage of decay. Despite most Marxist Aestheticists being unified over the idea that art should represent historical reality and hence possess a consciousness raising function in this respect - how Schoenberg and wider expressionism could fulfil the latter purpose and reconcile itself with the working class in an era of alienation, is beyond me.
Jameson concludes in typical post-modernist fashion and outlines the general futility of art as a vehicle for social change, and how the existence of a progressive bourgeois culture is largely incompatible with the capitalist world system where sovereignty lay in a realm above the state and far removed from the worker-capital dialectic. However Jameson is not that defeatist - he notes that perhaps modernism could now be the only way to liberate humanity from the vices of mass culture and save them from standardised philistinism that pollutes the commodified elements of our culture. An interesting point on the ideological nature of nature is raised noting how conceptions of it has changed from being once subversive, now to something reactionary and bourgeois, yet with this may be up for reinterpretation once again with the current crises we face. I find this particularly inspiring, based on the Blakean tradition, perhaps it is time to blast open modernity and return to nature as a subversive, revolutionary concept that when depicted in art, can raise consciousness of Capitalism's second biggest contradiction - how infinite accumulation can be reconciled with a planet of finite resources.
The highlight of the book is the opening presentation surrounding the realist/modernist debate pervading much early 20th century music and accompanying the crisis point reached in western tonality - the summit of the harmonic dialectic within music - but also wider crises reached in the arts in general. Ernst Bloch opens with a defence of expressionism with an obvious acknowledgement of the latent authoritarianism creeping into soviet arts policy. He espouses expressionism as the revolutionary form that can expose the fissures of capitalism and represent the system in its decadence. Georgy Lukacs however provides a stark rebuttal of this and delivers a scathing critique of bourgeois conceptions of art. Notably the concept of 'immediacy' within art - the idea that much bourgeois art, though trying to represent concrete reality, fails to truly grasp the essence of society and its immanent relations. Lukacs demonstrates a rigorous knowledge of Hegel and cites the artist goal as being one of attaining 'all-round knowledge' with reference to Lenin. Art (literature) should grasp objective reality through Hegelian logic, and not just reproduce whatever manifests itself immediately and on the surface. One must understand the role of art in its context within the Hegelian totality and understand the correct dialectical unity of appearance and essence - then present this to the consumer without the need for any external commentary. With its utilitarian implications, this presents itself as the more convincing argument as it is a more accessible form for the working class to indulge in. The expressionists would refute this and claim the working classes are enthusiasts for such avant-garde music, but I regrettably struggle to believe this.
The rest of the book features more particular aesthetic critiques. Firstly Brecht, writing with characteristic theatricality and emotion, rebutting Lukacs and acknowledging his connections with the soviet union, I feel Brecht is trying to defend his own forays into self-indulgent art a tad, yet I don't blame him for his works are brilliant. Brecht relentlessly defends the right to free expression as the crux of his aesthetic philosophy - specifically the freedom for the artist to fail.
A congenial debate between Adorno and Benjamin ensues with conversation surrounding any of their key ideas. Commodity fetishism is discussed, that old Marxian term which Benjamin resuscitates and places at the heart of his cultural critique. Benjamin places strong emphasis on the phantasmic forces that dictate a commodities exchange value and pose existential threats to the nature of the human-as-commodity. This forms the foundation of much thought arising from the Frankfurt school. Elsewhere, Adorno is cautious when discussing Benjamin's optimism regarding his thesis 'Art in the age of mechanical production', noting how the culture industry, like all embodiments of capital, find ways of circumventing existential threats and barriers to accumulation. Benjamin's view that the accessible reproducibility of art can pose revolutionary opportunities to the proletariat in creating and owning a culture that can elevate consciousness to a new level - Adorno replies in stylistic pessimism that the new art forms arising can easily be assimilated into the establishment as evinced by the concrete realities of jazz. The concept of 'art as distraction' is explored and uncovers a critique of wider orthodox Marxist views. They both acknowledge how art under the current economic base serves a opiating function that in the Soviet union has not been removed and structures the regime's imposition of socialist realism as an aesthetic principle. This reflects the wider views of the Frankfurt school who look to distance themselves from the Marxist disposition towards labour as a liberating principle of humanity's 'species being' - particularly critiques from Marcuse in 'Liberation of eros' that attaches a freudian perspective.
Adorno is by far the most rigorous Marxist aestheticist yet despite the coherence of his theories, a lot of them do not stand the test of time. Firstly, positioning expressionism - particularly Schoenberg's - as the ultimate aesthetic in Marxism. He describes art as 'negative knowledge' of the world that should not 'resolve objective contradictions in a spurious harmony' but instead embody the contradictions, 'pure and compromised' in its innermost structure. I assume this views the explicit dissonances within expressionism as the ultimate embodiment and representation of the horrific nature of capitalism in its final stage of decay. Despite most Marxist Aestheticists being unified over the idea that art should represent historical reality and hence possess a consciousness raising function in this respect - how Schoenberg and wider expressionism could fulfil the latter purpose and reconcile itself with the working class in an era of alienation, is beyond me.
Jameson concludes in typical post-modernist fashion and outlines the general futility of art as a vehicle for social change, and how the existence of a progressive bourgeois culture is largely incompatible with the capitalist world system where sovereignty lay in a realm above the state and far removed from the worker-capital dialectic. However Jameson is not that defeatist - he notes that perhaps modernism could now be the only way to liberate humanity from the vices of mass culture and save them from standardised philistinism that pollutes the commodified elements of our culture. An interesting point on the ideological nature of nature is raised noting how conceptions of it has changed from being once subversive, now to something reactionary and bourgeois, yet with this may be up for reinterpretation once again with the current crises we face. I find this particularly inspiring, based on the Blakean tradition, perhaps it is time to blast open modernity and return to nature as a subversive, revolutionary concept that when depicted in art, can raise consciousness of Capitalism's second biggest contradiction - how infinite accumulation can be reconciled with a planet of finite resources.
April 19, 2009
This is my third time actually going through this text. I borrowed it on curiosity from a friend of mine and tried to give it a good going-over. I think i understood what I was reading well enough but the aracana and the historical jargon was a little distancing. I find a lot of marxist theory can be like that, frustratingly so.
I'd like to learn it more, be more conversant in it, my sympathies are definitely on that side of the spectrum- at least, in the realm of politics and history. I'm not so very certain there is a non-mystical, hermetically sealed way to read history without bumping into huge Hegelian discourses about the World Spirit and Weltanschaung and what-you-will. I find that interesting material, certainly, but thinking along those catergories is better as a solitary discipline than a broadening appraisal. Otherwise it's too Germanic, too murky, too heavy on the specialization to be used effectively and pragmatically. Thus to Marx, to materialism. I like the way it levels the playing field of discourses, too, in that it unearths the constructions which are (as someone said of Chaucer's irony) 'too large to be seen.' I like the empirical understanding of the making, working, fashioning, selling dialectic going on all the time. It's fruitful and penetrative when dealing with large structures and mainstream dialogue: yeah, ok, big shot but who's the guy in the basement shoveling coal into your furnace? Cuts out a lot of the bullshit about market opportunities, transitional labor forces, neo-democracy, whatever. Nuts and bolts, people.
wWhen it comes to aesthetic theory, though, the nuts and bolts appraoch begins to falter. Let's not politicize our art and especially our artists- underlined even more so when it comes to doing it as it were from the outside. If one decides a certain kind of literature or literary style is more or less politically expedient that's of course one's right as a reader. but all too often I think it's about putting shoes on a horse. Ideology might empower and engage an artist, certainly, but I think by its very nature art contradicts ideological pretenses by being an aspect of the human consciousness, the human presence.
We are too frisky, as beings, for all that. It's vey hard to accurately pin down someone within a matrix, assuming that their experience on this planet is in any level sufficiently realized and vivid. A dot moving on a horizon has a universe within it, yet it would be mighty hard to preceive that universe in all its variety and depth unless it begins to speak or be confronted by...art! Art is or should be our way of creating an added provocation to our everyday life. It's an enhancer, an enricher, the way that color on a wall changes the way you percieve the wall itself. So when we start to theorize about the arts it's really no more than art appreiciation- non gustibus debutantum est, naturally, which is why it's so much fun to argue about. But there's no really totalizing theory of art, or can be, so long as people's consciousness is consistently at play. New forms emerge, they can't help but do so. Theory is made to be broken. Who would want a world where art is made to suit theoretical priorities? Well....
The dialogue here is very intense, complex, and cultivated. We've got an assembly of heavyweights here- I think it might be fair to say that between them you've got at least a large chunk of the nucelus of 20th Century intellectual thought. The arguements come fast and quick, build and finish. The first time through, you start to feel that the person who has just finished speaking has pretty much nailed it outright- they have taken up all the different critiques into their statement, developed the thesis sufficiently enough that it nails home the issue at hand for all time. Then- the next one comes through and lo and behold Lukacs has told Bloch precisely where to stick it. THen Adorno cleans Lukacs' reductive, pompous, partisan smirk right off his face. Benjamin makes luminous sense in his own right, of course, but doesn't go for the kill- as if he ever did.
The meat of it for me at least is in one of the buttressing 'Presentations'- where the unnamed editors describe the upcoming debate for the reader, and say essentially that Brecht is going to outline a position with a lot of experiential value but one that also happens to be theoretically weak. Adorno (I think it's him, at any rate) has a stronger theoretical stance, but doesn't have as much application to match it up. Riiiight.
Great, well you know if you're going to come up with theories about artistic engagement with the political sphere, how we can enact positive changes in the body politic through the mass accessibility of our art, well then maybe the insights of the ACTUAL ARTIST in the bunch might be a little more pressing than those of partisans or theoreticians. Lukacs, Adorno, Benjamin never wrote anything creative that I've ever heard about. Brecht's literally putting on plays for the workers in the flesh and gauging their reactions.
Not to discount the importance of theory- without an intellectual framework there is a lack of justification for things. Plus it inspires people, pushes the discourse further, it changes language, thought, etc. OK sure. Theory is important. But I have to take issue with the idea that artists who are engaged in the social arena along clearly expresed political sympathies might have something more valuable to say than what theory might dictate on a blackboard.
Brecht takes a sarcastic ease in addressing the challenges of the other theorists, explaining at point how for him as reader and as a writer it isn't so much important how you get there as an artist, or what you want to depict- people do it in different ways, that's all. Workers don't give a shit if the play they see is culturally within the field of their discourse as much as if it moves them, speaks to them, penetrates into their inner world. If politics comes back out of the other side, so much the better, but let's not put the theoretical cart before the horse by condemming things people do who are in an entirely different arena. Everyone's a critic, and everyone should be allowed to be, but not all criticism is created equal.
January 5, 2025
ხელოვნებათმცოდნეობის და უფრო ლიტმცოდნეობის კურსების სილაბუსებისთვის აუცილებელი ტექსტებია.
ეს ტექსტები წასაკითხია დიალექტიკურად, მთავარი მაინც ალბათ ლუკაჩის და ბრეხტის დებატებია, ასევე ბენიამინის საუბრები ბრეხტთან (რამაც კაფკას ხელახლა წაკითხვა მომანდომა), სადაც ურთიერთ საწინააღმდეგო აზრებიდან ხელოვნების გაგების ახალი გზები უნდა ვიპოვოთ და ამასთან ერთად ვისწავლოთ მათი მეთოდოლოგია, თუ როგორ უდგებიან ისინი ხელოვნების ნაწარმს, მის ავტორს, და პოლიტ-ეკონომიურ კონტექსტს, სადაც ეს ავტორი იშვა.
ეს ტექსტები წასაკითხია დიალექტიკურად, მთავარი მაინც ალბათ ლუკაჩის და ბრეხტის დებატებია, ასევე ბენიამინის საუბრები ბრეხტთან (რამაც კაფკას ხელახლა წაკითხვა მომანდომა), სადაც ურთიერთ საწინააღმდეგო აზრებიდან ხელოვნების გაგების ახალი გზები უნდა ვიპოვოთ და ამასთან ერთად ვისწავლოთ მათი მეთოდოლოგია, თუ როგორ უდგებიან ისინი ხელოვნების ნაწარმს, მის ავტორს, და პოლიტ-ეკონომიურ კონტექსტს, სადაც ეს ავტორი იშვა.
July 1, 2018
It is really interesting reading such opposing views about the role of communism in the arts. However some of them are such extreme views that seem to be very limited and not open to other interpretations of art or communism. It is also quite a hard book to understand if one does not have any background in art and artistic movements. Mainly focused on the debate between the legitimacy of realism vs abstract art in connection to the communist ideal. Depending on the views of the reader, certain chapters/ philosophers, might appeal more than others, but in general one will find interesting perspectives throughout the whole book.
March 12, 2021
“‘Is there any meaning in life when men exist who beat people until the bones break in their bodies?’, is also the question whether any art now has a right to exist; whether intellectual regression is not inherent in the concept of committed literature because of the regression of society.”
Adorno, say what you will about him, asking the Questions!
Adorno, say what you will about him, asking the Questions!
March 2, 2023
I won’t pretend I followed much of what was going on this collection -- mostly because I bought this in a Verso sale without actually knowing what it was about and because I’ve never read any Adorno — but I will say that this has made me excited about diving back into critical theory.
December 13, 2020
muy variado, Bloch y Lukacs (con sus obvias salvedades) bien, brecht y benjamin bien, adorno bastante opaco y ocasionalmente brillante, las introducciones de jameson utilísimas
November 3, 2024
Interesting debate if a bit esoteric, these dudes should really just pick up the phone and hash it out
July 14, 2025
insightful
March 24, 2024
Ojalá algún día tener disputas así. Mis favoritas: sobre el expresionismo y las cartas entre Benjamin y Adorno
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October 16, 2024A collection of essays, correspondence, letters, convening on the subject of Expressionism following the 30s in Germany.
It is clear to me that my knowledge of this general movement is insufficient to a point where I can't pass judgement on any individual writer's argument in a really determinate manner but I certainly get impressions.
Lukacs here comes across as the weakest of all of them in his arguments, there's a certain level of conceptual analysis I can appreciate but as Bloch rightly points out in the first essay that responds to Lukacs' essay (which generally started this whole thing it would seem) an analysis of Expressionism without reference to any of its key writers is very odd indeed. He also comes across theoretically weak apart from rather broadly non-aesthetic concepts such as reification and so forth. I just don't feel his arguments bear any weight, I'm not convinced expressionism reproduces bourgeois reality and systems nor fascistic in nature. That said on a reread I could change my view.
The back-end essay by Adorno which starts to rope in so many forms of media it's astounding is very good and worth the book I would say. It is a response to Sartre, Brecht, and others and is probably the most direct and engaging of the texts.
In terms of a collection it's pretty good volume. If anything there is a good sense of the history of the period, as well as the brilliant concluding section by Jameson who manages to tie it all together (and slightly redeems Lukacs in my view.)
It is clear to me that my knowledge of this general movement is insufficient to a point where I can't pass judgement on any individual writer's argument in a really determinate manner but I certainly get impressions.
Lukacs here comes across as the weakest of all of them in his arguments, there's a certain level of conceptual analysis I can appreciate but as Bloch rightly points out in the first essay that responds to Lukacs' essay (which generally started this whole thing it would seem) an analysis of Expressionism without reference to any of its key writers is very odd indeed. He also comes across theoretically weak apart from rather broadly non-aesthetic concepts such as reification and so forth. I just don't feel his arguments bear any weight, I'm not convinced expressionism reproduces bourgeois reality and systems nor fascistic in nature. That said on a reread I could change my view.
The back-end essay by Adorno which starts to rope in so many forms of media it's astounding is very good and worth the book I would say. It is a response to Sartre, Brecht, and others and is probably the most direct and engaging of the texts.
In terms of a collection it's pretty good volume. If anything there is a good sense of the history of the period, as well as the brilliant concluding section by Jameson who manages to tie it all together (and slightly redeems Lukacs in my view.)
February 5, 2020
Essential reading. It unfolds powerfully like a drama of titans. The benevolent Bloch ransacked by the bullish Ares-Lukács, himself darted at by troubadours, Brecht and Benjamin, and finally, in their company, the mighty Adorno definitely topples him. I'm sorry to sound so inflated, but this discourse is buzzing with epoch-defining grandeur. Truly. As a long-time reader of Adorno and Benjamin, I was especially happy to have access to Lukács, who was an early model for these two younger writers, but who turned dramatically to a raging offense against any expressive subjectivity in literature. He is a powerful thinker and very persuasive, even to this modernist apologist. I strongly recommend reading it straight through.
December 8, 2020
Almost certainly my favourite book on communism I've yet read. A clash of the titans.
Lukács impresses early on by making the strongest possible case for the losing position of socialist realism, beating the shit out of poor Bloch in the process. Jesterly Brecht makes an early appearance in the footnotes to Lukács' essay, a couple of drive-by nose-tweaks that set the stage for a subsequent long-form takedown that foregrounds the need for the freedom of artists to experiment and play -- unsurprising coming from the only actual artist represented among the writers this book collects.
The following portions of the book that concern Benjamin are the low-point here. It's not Benjamin's fault; the decision to represent his thought through diary entries and letters simply puts him at a disadvantage compared to the more rigorous showings of his peers, who actually wrote these essays for publication. Theodor Adorno/'Teddie Weisengrund' (lol)'s letters critiquing various works by Benjamin are relatively uninteresting for similar reasons.
Unlike Benjamin, though, Adorno gets the chance to redeem himself in the book's final section, two full essays wherein he absolutely lays down the law. In the first he gives Lukács a right proper seeing-to, totally demolishing his arguments for socialist realism in with full confidence and rigor. Standout diss:
"Lukács quotes approvingly from my work on the ageing of modern music [...] I do not bregrudge him this; 'Only those thoughts are true which fail to understand themselves' [a self-quote!], and no author can lay claim to proprietary rights over them. Nevertheless, it will need a better argument than Lukács to take these rights away from me."
Beside this passage I annotated, in block caps, one word: BOSS.
On Lukács, subordinate as he was to soviet ideology, Adorno concludes: "here is a man who is desperately tugging at his chains, imagining all the while that their clanking heralds the onward march of the world-spirit. He remains dazzled by the power that would never take his insubordinate ideas to heart, even if it tolerated them."
Less obviously antipathic, and therefore slightly less magisterial (though still strong), is the critique of Brecht and Sartre in Adorno's next and final essay, where he finally advances the claim that, in the postwar era of consumer capitalism, where even political art is appropriated and commodified by the culture industry, the only truly radical work is that which, explicitly political or not, makes itself formally intolerable to that industry's tastes and trends. Samuel Beckett is treated as an ideal model.
I get this reasoning, and sympathise, but find it ultimately unsatisfactory -- as does Fredric Jameson, whose outro efficiently lays out the strengths and weaknesses of all these thinkers and opens the door for a redemption of Lukács, whose ideal of artistic realism was improper for its time but may have new relevance today, in a time when high literature is in love with pastiche and the techniques of modernism are hegemonic in the culture industry -- in the irony of advertising, the quick-cut montage of film.
Of course, Jameson's "today" is today's yesterday, and this book hasn't answered my questions about the aesthetics proper to the capitalist world of 2020. But it's a hell of a primer and an essential point of departure. Loved it.
Lukács impresses early on by making the strongest possible case for the losing position of socialist realism, beating the shit out of poor Bloch in the process. Jesterly Brecht makes an early appearance in the footnotes to Lukács' essay, a couple of drive-by nose-tweaks that set the stage for a subsequent long-form takedown that foregrounds the need for the freedom of artists to experiment and play -- unsurprising coming from the only actual artist represented among the writers this book collects.
The following portions of the book that concern Benjamin are the low-point here. It's not Benjamin's fault; the decision to represent his thought through diary entries and letters simply puts him at a disadvantage compared to the more rigorous showings of his peers, who actually wrote these essays for publication. Theodor Adorno/'Teddie Weisengrund' (lol)'s letters critiquing various works by Benjamin are relatively uninteresting for similar reasons.
Unlike Benjamin, though, Adorno gets the chance to redeem himself in the book's final section, two full essays wherein he absolutely lays down the law. In the first he gives Lukács a right proper seeing-to, totally demolishing his arguments for socialist realism in with full confidence and rigor. Standout diss:
"Lukács quotes approvingly from my work on the ageing of modern music [...] I do not bregrudge him this; 'Only those thoughts are true which fail to understand themselves' [a self-quote!], and no author can lay claim to proprietary rights over them. Nevertheless, it will need a better argument than Lukács to take these rights away from me."
Beside this passage I annotated, in block caps, one word: BOSS.
On Lukács, subordinate as he was to soviet ideology, Adorno concludes: "here is a man who is desperately tugging at his chains, imagining all the while that their clanking heralds the onward march of the world-spirit. He remains dazzled by the power that would never take his insubordinate ideas to heart, even if it tolerated them."
Less obviously antipathic, and therefore slightly less magisterial (though still strong), is the critique of Brecht and Sartre in Adorno's next and final essay, where he finally advances the claim that, in the postwar era of consumer capitalism, where even political art is appropriated and commodified by the culture industry, the only truly radical work is that which, explicitly political or not, makes itself formally intolerable to that industry's tastes and trends. Samuel Beckett is treated as an ideal model.
I get this reasoning, and sympathise, but find it ultimately unsatisfactory -- as does Fredric Jameson, whose outro efficiently lays out the strengths and weaknesses of all these thinkers and opens the door for a redemption of Lukács, whose ideal of artistic realism was improper for its time but may have new relevance today, in a time when high literature is in love with pastiche and the techniques of modernism are hegemonic in the culture industry -- in the irony of advertising, the quick-cut montage of film.
Of course, Jameson's "today" is today's yesterday, and this book hasn't answered my questions about the aesthetics proper to the capitalist world of 2020. But it's a hell of a primer and an essential point of departure. Loved it.
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February 7, 2024something about the look and feel of a verso book ... it's just a vibe.
this one was a bit theoretically dense for me, and i'm not sure how much i got from it. Although certain parts did warm my lil cultural critic heart. and the discussion of surrealist photomontage actually reminded me a LOT of corecore tiktok edits. and i will say brecht is the best writer of the bunch
the difficulty of this piece also got me thinking about verso's audience and the function of agitprop and theory in our current moment ... like who is this for? academics?
Some bangers herein:
"If someone makes a statement which is untrue -- or irrelevant -- merely because it rhymes, then he is a formalist." -Brecht
"The world is not obliged to be sentimental." -Brecht
"We have a people in mind who make history, change the world and themselves. We have in mind a fighting people and therefore an aggressive concept of what is popular. Popular means: intelligible into broad masses, adopting and enriching their forms of expressions / assuming their standpoint, confirming and correcting it / representing the most progressive section of the people so that it can assume leadership..." -Brecht
"There is not only such a thing as being popular, there is also the process of becoming popular." -Brecht
"Those for whom life has become transformed into writing can only read the story backwards. That is the only way in which they can confront themselves, and only thus -- by fleeing the present -- can the understand life." - Benjamin
"'The State must with away.' Who says that? The State." -Benjamin quoting Brecht
"There can't be any doubt about it any longer: the struggle against ideology has become the new ideology." -Benjamin quoting Brecht
"The goal of the revolution is the abolition of fear. Therefore we need have no fear of it, nor need we ontologize our fear." -Adorno
"A society wholly in the grip of the Culture Industry displays all the reactions of an amphibian." -Adorno
"Socialist realism did not simply have its origins, as communist theologians would like to believe, in a socially healhty and sound world; it was equally the product of the backwardness of consciousness and of the social forces of production." -Adorno
"When genocide becomes part of the cultural heritage in the themes of committed literature, it becomes easier to continue to play along with the culture which gave birth to murder." -Adorno
"Today every phenomenon of culture, even if a model of integrity, is liable to be suffocated in the cultivation of kitsch. Yet paradoxically in the same epoch it is to works of art that has fallen the burden of wordlessly asserting what is barred to politics." -Adorno (this one reminds me of Barbie)
"Nothing has, of course, more effectively discredited Marxism than the practice of affixing instant class labels (generally 'petty bourgeois') to textual or intellectual objects." -Frederic Jameson
"The real crux of the modern aesthetic debate, [Adorno] concluded, necessarily lay in the problem of the relationship between the workers and intellectuals within the revolutionary movement." -Presentation III
this one was a bit theoretically dense for me, and i'm not sure how much i got from it. Although certain parts did warm my lil cultural critic heart. and the discussion of surrealist photomontage actually reminded me a LOT of corecore tiktok edits. and i will say brecht is the best writer of the bunch
the difficulty of this piece also got me thinking about verso's audience and the function of agitprop and theory in our current moment ... like who is this for? academics?
Some bangers herein:
"If someone makes a statement which is untrue -- or irrelevant -- merely because it rhymes, then he is a formalist." -Brecht
"The world is not obliged to be sentimental." -Brecht
"We have a people in mind who make history, change the world and themselves. We have in mind a fighting people and therefore an aggressive concept of what is popular. Popular means: intelligible into broad masses, adopting and enriching their forms of expressions / assuming their standpoint, confirming and correcting it / representing the most progressive section of the people so that it can assume leadership..." -Brecht
"There is not only such a thing as being popular, there is also the process of becoming popular." -Brecht
"Those for whom life has become transformed into writing can only read the story backwards. That is the only way in which they can confront themselves, and only thus -- by fleeing the present -- can the understand life." - Benjamin
"'The State must with away.' Who says that? The State." -Benjamin quoting Brecht
"There can't be any doubt about it any longer: the struggle against ideology has become the new ideology." -Benjamin quoting Brecht
"The goal of the revolution is the abolition of fear. Therefore we need have no fear of it, nor need we ontologize our fear." -Adorno
"A society wholly in the grip of the Culture Industry displays all the reactions of an amphibian." -Adorno
"Socialist realism did not simply have its origins, as communist theologians would like to believe, in a socially healhty and sound world; it was equally the product of the backwardness of consciousness and of the social forces of production." -Adorno
"When genocide becomes part of the cultural heritage in the themes of committed literature, it becomes easier to continue to play along with the culture which gave birth to murder." -Adorno
"Today every phenomenon of culture, even if a model of integrity, is liable to be suffocated in the cultivation of kitsch. Yet paradoxically in the same epoch it is to works of art that has fallen the burden of wordlessly asserting what is barred to politics." -Adorno (this one reminds me of Barbie)
"Nothing has, of course, more effectively discredited Marxism than the practice of affixing instant class labels (generally 'petty bourgeois') to textual or intellectual objects." -Frederic Jameson
"The real crux of the modern aesthetic debate, [Adorno] concluded, necessarily lay in the problem of the relationship between the workers and intellectuals within the revolutionary movement." -Presentation III
January 31, 2023
a 2 out of 5 stars is defined as "it was ok" on goodreads, and that's how i feel about it now, after just having finished it. just okay. i'm gonna be completely honest... as someone who has been dabbling in philosophy for ten years and art theory for two, this was difficult to get through. as usual, whenever i have this problem, it's hard for me to objectively conclude whether it was my lack of intelligence/comprehension/concentration/etc, or the inaccessibility of the work that was the issue. this was one of those reads where you reach the bottom of a page and realize that the whole time you were actually thinking about how your left sock is sliding under your heel or about the comeback you could have made in an argument five weeks ago. a good amount of background knowledge is needed to follow along with what is going on. marxism, expressionism, formalism, modernism, socialist realism, and a plethora of other -isms form the backbone of these writings, and it can be easy to get lost in them.
that being said. the only reason this book was able to hold my attention was because it was presented as an ongoing discussion between these five men, and feeling this sense of action-- being able to see each essay and letter as a small part of a larger evolving conversation, rather than as static and conclusive statements-- was refreshing and what i felt was probably a good representation of the dynamism of thought that actually existed during this time. the letters between adorno and benjamin were fun for me, more so because their it was curious to see their relationship (i couldn't keep up with the actual content lol). as others have said here, jameson's introductions were essential for me in understanding the context these writings were coming out of (1930s germany and it's pre-war sociopolitical tension). but also, the fact that these were just letters... i mean... imagine writing letters like that to any of your friends...
still, even jameson's syntheses were difficult for me to process. i dunno. sometimes when i have difficulty getting through a tough read, i find that once i've skimmed through and "scanned the data" into my head, so to speak, i'm able to process the content on a second read-through. if i ever embark on any analysis that draws upon the frankfurt school, i'll try to give it a thorough reread. someday...
now that i've exposed my own stupidity lmao i would like to give a shoutout to the other reviewers here who are nerdy enough to read critical theory, actually understand it, and sum it up in plain speech for me. yall actually helped to clarify this book for me a lot lmao. many thanks.
that being said. the only reason this book was able to hold my attention was because it was presented as an ongoing discussion between these five men, and feeling this sense of action-- being able to see each essay and letter as a small part of a larger evolving conversation, rather than as static and conclusive statements-- was refreshing and what i felt was probably a good representation of the dynamism of thought that actually existed during this time. the letters between adorno and benjamin were fun for me, more so because their it was curious to see their relationship (i couldn't keep up with the actual content lol). as others have said here, jameson's introductions were essential for me in understanding the context these writings were coming out of (1930s germany and it's pre-war sociopolitical tension). but also, the fact that these were just letters... i mean... imagine writing letters like that to any of your friends...
still, even jameson's syntheses were difficult for me to process. i dunno. sometimes when i have difficulty getting through a tough read, i find that once i've skimmed through and "scanned the data" into my head, so to speak, i'm able to process the content on a second read-through. if i ever embark on any analysis that draws upon the frankfurt school, i'll try to give it a thorough reread. someday...
now that i've exposed my own stupidity lmao i would like to give a shoutout to the other reviewers here who are nerdy enough to read critical theory, actually understand it, and sum it up in plain speech for me. yall actually helped to clarify this book for me a lot lmao. many thanks.
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